Correction: David Sawyer's surname was misspelled in an earlier version of this column.

It's as if the suburban Democrats could sense what was brewing, which is probably why some headed for the exits of the Polish Community Center Wednesday night like critters instinctively fleeing the coast ahead of a hurricane.

Whatever loomed in the showdown between the two top-tier announced Albany mayoral candidates in the suddenly dawned post-Jerry Jennings epoch, this was not their fight.

The migration had the feel of every western you've ever seen in which two drifters start eyeballing each other and all sensible, law-abiding townsfolk scurry for shelter in the nearest saloon or dry goods store.

As widely expected, City Treasurer Kathy Sheehan emerged the victor over 11th Ward Leader Corey Ellis in the contest for official party backing to succeed Jennings in the Sept. 10 primary.

And while Jennings was not physically in the building, his presence was everywhere. Only 24 hours earlier he had abruptly announced he would not seek a sixth term, setting the stage for this showdown that — as noted by longtime party watcher and inveterate stat-keeper Dick Barrett — featured a choice between two candidates for mayor with no connections to the mythologized O'Connell-Corning Democratic machine that once ran this very show.

Barrett, a former city parks commissioner who later moved to Colonie, acknowledged that Jennings was forced at key moments in his political career to buck the party, most notably as an independent to keep his Common Council seat in 1989 and then as the challenger to Democrats' endorsed mayoral candidate in 1993, former party Chairman Harold L. Joyce

But Barrett noted Jennings' first council campaign — an unsuccessful 1977 bid against 12th Ward incumbent David Sawyer — came with the support of party boss and Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd, who later appointed Jennings to the seat in 1980 when Sawyer moved out of the city.

While some of his fellow suburban Democrats melted away, Barrett wasn't about to miss this bit of history and remained seated in the cavernous hall on Washington Avenue Extension to watch what he called the party's "historic" break with that era.

Hired by Corning and kept on by Mayor Thomas M. Whalen III, Barrett was forced from his job by Jennings in 1997 and harbors few warm feelings for him. Yet he copped to a certain sadness about the scene playing out below the big red, white and blue "Welcome Albany County Democrats" sign strung up above the dais.

"I had this emotional feeling, a certain emptiness, a certain sadness," Barrett said. "I was amazed. All these unknowns now are running for mayor. They're not part of the party tradition. It's kind of the end of an era."

Not just that, Barrett said, but party faithful were being asked to choose — improperly, in the eyes of Ellis' camp, which pushed for no endorsement on procedural grounds — between two progressive Democrats who embodied the kind of politics the O'Connell-Corning machine sought to marginalize.

"For years the party worked diligently to keep the progressives out of a major office," Barrett recalled. "They would have been appalled."

But, no doubt, many others welcome the new future Sheehan and Ellis represent.

And in a twist that makes this week's vertiginous turn of events even more disorienting, it's now Ellis — the state Democratic committeeman and former 3rd Ward councilman — who is questioning Sheehan's commitment to the Democratic Party, repeatedly referencing in recent days the fact that she did not enroll as a Democrat in Albany until 2005, the same year Ellis was elected to the Common Council on the Working Families Party line after losing his Democratic primary.

Yet, in a speech to rally supporters Ellis also railed against an entrenched party organization that he said continues to treat the black community with a lack of respect.

"This is not about all the political powers that be who are going to come forth and they're going to chant, 'Change! Change!' when they're endorsing candidates who (weren't) with us from day one," Ellis said.

Sheehan's answer to the enrollment question — which likely matters less to your average voter than the party faithful, who voted to endorse her anyway — is that it was the remnants of that machine that prompted her to shy away from the party when she moved to Albany more than two decades ago.

"It was something that gave me pause," Sheehan said. "If that matters to voters, they're going to have to make a decision on that."